G avin was silent for a considerable time, giving me the sliteyed stare, tapping his fingertips gently together under his chin. While he did that I used the time to look at the other two guys. They looked like they'd been hired for their looks, sent over by a casting company to play high-powered corporate security guys. One had a dark crew cut. The other had shaved his head. They were about six feet tall, the shaved-head guy a little taller, and they looked as if they got a lot of exercise.
When he'd softened me up enough with the flinty stare, Gavin finally spoke. His voice was flat, and measured like a guy trying to overcome a stutter.
'We pride ourselves,' he said, 'on being a can-do company. If the conventional businesslike and professional approaches are closed to us, we find other ways.'
I nodded enthusiastically.
'I admire that in any organization,' I said and looked at the guys on the couch, 'don't you?'
Neither of them answered. Gavin spoke again. 'Do you understand what I am saying to you?'
'Same thing you've been saying since you came in with the Righteous Brothers. You don't want me trying to find out what happened to Trent Rowley. Or why you put a tail on Ellen Eisen and Marlene Rowley.'
G avin hardened his stare, which was no easy task.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' Gavin said slowly. 'I came here to offer you a chance to make some serious money. You not only declined, you did so in an offensive manner, and I am just reminding you that we at Kinergy are used to getting what we want.'
'You know what would be really helpful to me?' I said.
'What?'
'If you could teach me that stare. I could frighten the knob off a door if I had that stare.'
G avin held the stare for a moment, but he couldn't keep it up and shifted his gaze to the window behind me.
From the couch the shaved-head guy said, 'Mr. Gavin, if it was okay with you, maybe we could teach him some manners.'
'Eeek,' I said.
G avin kept looking out my window for a couple of beats. I suspected he was counting. Then he shifted his gaze back to me. 'Not this time, Larry,' he said. 'Not this time.'
'Larry?' I said. 'How can you have an enforcer named Larry?'
L arry said, 'You think there's something funny about my name, pal?'
'With your name,' I said. 'With your act. With your haircut.'
'Larry,' Gavin said. 'Shut up.'
G avin stood. The two men on the couch stood.
'I want you to think hard on this,' Gavin said to me, bending slightly forward. 'And we'll come back soon and make you the offer again.'
'Oh good,' I said. 'It'll give purpose to my week.' Nobody seemed to have anything to say about that, so, after a moment, the three of them turned and marched out.
23
I was in my office, thinking, when Marlene Rowley came in. Today she was wearing big sunglasses and a low- cut red linen dress. I was relieved to see her. Thinking is hard.
'I'm on my way to the Gainsborough exhibit,' she said, 'and I thought I'd stop by and get a report.'
'Would you settle for a few questions?'
'I did not employ you to ask questions,' she said.
'Didn't we already go through this?' I said.
She sat down across the desk from me and crossed her legs, sort of immodestly, I thought. Maybe we were getting more intimate. Last time it had been only kneecaps.
'So, may I assume that you have no new information on my husband's death?'
'I have information all over me,' I said. 'But I don't know what to do with it.'
'Do you know who killed Trent?'
'Not yet.'
'Have you enough information to exonerate me from any possible complicity?'
'No.'
'Well, for God's sake,' she said. 'What have you been doing?'
'Suffering fools gladly,' I said.
'Well ... may I assume that I am exempt from that remark?'
'Sure,' I said. 'Did you know that you were being followed?'
